It was in 1838 that the daguerreotype, which is said to be the prototype of the silver halide camera, was invented. This photo of Chopin, the "poet of the piano", was taken about 10 years later. Just for your information, the pictures on the right side are portraits of him. The picture on top is a portrait often seen in the music room of a school, and the picture on the bottom is a portrait by Delacroix, who was also a best friend of Chopin. The photo is considered to have been taken when his tuberculosis was in an advanced stage.
  As this photo shows, the history of the silver halide camera is surprisingly long - it has continued for 160 years, up until the beginning of this century.
 

  However, the arrival of the "digital camera era", which occurred as soon as the 21st century began, resulted in a drastic change. As the graphs show, shipment volumes of digital cameras (white bar graph) have continued to grow dramatically since 2000. They broke even with silver halide cameras and passed them by shortly thereafter. Nowadays, we routinely bring digital cameras when we travel. However, the arrival of the digital camera era, around 2002, was a historic event which put an end to the era of silver halide cameras that had continued for 160 years.

  The newly-begun digital camera era has been progressing at an aggressive speed. Now, even compact cameras offer over 10,000,000 pixels. Technological innovations await us in the future - those who bring them may be the leaders of the next generation, who are trained in the Nikon Chair of Optical Engineering.